4 Ways to Optimize Your Facebook Ads

Are you advertising on Facebook?

If you’re in the process of building a personal brand or growing your business, you should be! With over 2.6 billion current users in 2020, Facebook remains the largest social network on the web. That means no matter who your target audience is, a good chunk of them are probably using Facebook right now. 

While there are still some beneficial grassroots ways of building your audience through Facebook Groups, Stories, and Pages, all of your efforts will have a greater impact if you also strategically invest in Facebook ads. 

But targeting and running successful ads isn’t cheap. That’s why you’ll want to make the most of your ad dollars. Our Red Bird Social team has rounded up these four important ways to optimize your Facebook ads for success. 

Need help running ads that will grow your business? Set up your free consultation with our team!

1. Define Your Audience

If someone asked who the target audience of your brand was, would you be able to tell them? Knowing your customer well is possibly one of the biggest keys to your marketing success. If you haven’t done the work to figure out who you serve, creating an avatar is a great place to start! What is your customer interested in, and where would you find them on an average day? What age are they, and is your audience mostly male or female? Even knowing where they shop and what music they listen to will help you better understand who to target with your ads, and exactly what to say. 

2. Access your Customer Insights regularly

One great thing about advertising on Facebook is the new Customer Insights platform. When it comes to spreading your message, in-depth insights will equip you to deliver meaningful messages to your consumer. This tool within Facebook helps marketers learn more about their target audience, with information about their location, demographics, the things they buy, and more. If you’ve already set up your Facebook Business Manager, you can access your insights anytime by heading to https://www.facebook.com/ads/audience-insights. 

3. Always work through Ads Manager

Speaking of Business Manager, let’s talk about utilizing your Business Ads Manager. Think of this as a home base or mainframe from which all of your ad setup and adjustments should happen. 

Have you ever seen that button that says ‘Boost Post’ in the corner of posts you’ve shared on your Facebook feed? This is advertised as a quick and easy way to help you reach more of your audience fast. Sounds good, right? Maybe not. The problem with boosting a post is you aren’t able to use the same amount of strategic audience targeting as you can inside your Ads Manager. Ads set up directly in the Business Manager are proven to perform better, and target people who are more likely to actually respond to your content. So next time you want to put some money behind your content, take the extra step, and do it through Business Manager! 

4. Variation is key!

So you created an ad. It’s been running for a week, and so far the results are lackluster or nonexistent. Why is no one clicking through? The comments, likes, and shares have been few and far between. Should you take the ad down and come up with a new plan? Maybe not! When it comes to running social ads, especially on Facebook and Instagram, variation is key. 

Try running an A and B test on your ad. Switch out the image, try a different call to action, or shorten up your copy. Sometimes the smallest details can actually make the biggest difference when it comes to drawing the attention of your audience. As a bonus, the insights from these variation tests will help you learn more about what works best for your audience, and how to layout and design your ads in the future. 

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By implementing these four tips, you’ll be well on your way to optimized, high-performance Facebook ads that make a difference for your brand or business! What questions or issues have you run into while setting up Facebook ads?